Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
Thinking about this some more, I don't think the real benefit of the salons was intellectual. Ideas are really a dime a dozen. It's effecting them into money that is the hard part. The salons were meeting places of influential people (whether in ideas, industry, government,...). The largest benefit was probably the networking among them. You could bring an idea, and then get help in effecting it, and make money from it. So, although online forums where ideas are hashed out can be a help to an artist, it's not the same as being among the movers and shakers of the world.
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Yes, a side benefit to having ideas and seeing them progressed financially and perhaps administratively is to find oneself in the company of rich and influential people.
But some of the bigger people movements have emerged from those clusters of people with big ideas and little to no financial or administrative power. I'm thinking along the lines of the origins of the green movement, and other movements that had a long chat gestation amongst like and unalike thinkers, and little initial money and/or power/influence amongst the movers and shakers.
I suppose that my appreciation of a salon or meeting of thinkers and creators doesn't mean that anything constructive need come out of the discourse .... although it may. I see the discourse as a more pleasurable event where ideas are simply flung around (so to speak, lol) according to the events of the day as well as bigger picture ideology.